A Harare entrepreneur and social media personality known as MMatigari on X has warned businesses to check their ZIMRA accounts after he was flagged as owing US$20,000 by the revenue authority’s new digital system, Tax and Revenue Management System (TaRMS), in what he describes as a design flaw that punishes normal seasonal growth.
TaRMS is ZIMRA’s new online platform for all tax administration. It is the digital system introduced to replace the manual processes and the old SAP TRM system for Domestic Taxes, or inland revenue.
The system allows taxpayers to manage everything online, including registration, filing returns, making payments and applying for tax clearance certificates, integrating various tax functions into a single centralised system.
In a post on X on Tuesday, 29 September, MMatigari said he was surprised when ZIMRA’s debtors department called him to inform him that he owed US$20,000.00 in taxes.
He urged businesses to check their ZIMRA accounts, warning they could be flagged as owing due to the Q4 recalculation, and called on the Government to review the system.
Below is the post in full:
As a law-abiding citizen of Great Zimbabwe, I make sure I pay my taxes when they are due in terms of the law.
It came as a surprise when a few days ago, I got a call from ZIMRA.
“I am from the debtors department, you owe us $20,000.00 in taxes,” he said. “You need to pay up soon before we take measures to take the matter for prosecution,” he added, with a rather soft voice at odds with the underlying threat of prosecution.
“Based on my records, I owe you nothing, I pay all my taxes,” I defended myself.
“I suggest we meet for alignment. Our system reflects that you owe the government,” he suggested.
And so we met. At Kurima House – former Barclays Bank branch.
I had never been there since many years ago when I had a Barclays Bank current account, and the branch manager there had asked me to come and collect my Visa Electron card.
I must say that Zimra office looks well refurbished – nice paneling and partitions, etc. Good job.
We went through the tax records. In the end, he could not find exactly where the $20000 was coming from, though it was on the system.
“I can’t see how it’s coming about. I suggest you go to the TARMS office upstairs. They have a deeper access into the system,” he advised.
So upstairs we went. The office is on the 6th Floor. We found it after a bit of trouble with the elevators.
In the TARMs office, a few people sat in there, and it seems they have super-user access and deeper TARMS training.
“Please have a sit, I will be with you shortly. You are clients, we don’t want to keep you waiting”, one of them said pleasantly.
I must say that Prof. Mthuli Ncube (Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion), Kudakwashe David Mnangagwa (Deputy Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion), George Guvamatanga (Secretary for Finance), and ZIMRA executive seem to have invested in customer services training at ZIMRA. They have also invested a lot in digitising ZIMRA.
After going through the system, he turned his computer screen and started explaining.
“You obviously paid what was due, and in accordance with your QPDs,” he said. “Exactly!” I jumped in. “However…” he proceeded, ignoring my gleeful interruption. “… Your Q3 and Q4 QPDs show a significantly higher income than the first two. So when you submit those QPDs, our system assumes you owe us money from the previous QPDs. In other words you under-declared. As a result, our system recalculates the previous QPDs at the higher income levels in the last quarter and deems that as owing, and applies interest on those amounts owing,” he explained.
“But that’s unfair,” I mused. How am I to know that Q4 income is going to be higher in January? I asked him.
He explained that it’s just how the tax system is designed. He acknowledged that many businesses tend to make more income in the last quarter because of business cycles, and fall into this situation.
Perhaps the government should review this situation as it can affect businesses as they will owe the government unnecessarily just because of business cycles. If you make more income in Q4, it’s unfair for that cycle to be retrospectively applied as debt owing plus interest.
I am sharing this because there is a chance you owe ZIMRA due to this kind of situation.
Read and learn.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply